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An anonymous reader writes "A recent UN report suggested that people should be eating more insects, because they're much less harmful to the environment that traditional meat. In response, designer Mansour Ourasanah has created the Lepsis, a small insect breeder that could be used to grow and harvest grasshoppers in urban homes."

Why indoors? Why not commoditize it and automate it as a part of one's home?

Imagine a replacement window, which is an aquarium, which plus into one's electric and has a small computer to monitor food levels &c., as well as a wireless connection to one's broadband to report on conditions inside the tank.

One pays to have the window installed, plus a monthly fee to have the aquarium serviced and topped off from the outside through a locked access panel (there's a second set of locks on the inside panel, on

I watched a documentary once about some scientists stranded in the jungle who'd been collecting giant bugs of some sort. They ended up eating their samples they were so hungry. One of them said that they tasted a lot like lobster.

This might be competitive cost wise.Soy is fine, but tempeh is just inedible. People do not need a lot of things to live, but what is wrong with eating insects? It is not like they have the complex nervous systems that animals have. They can almost surely not even feel pain, they are practically simple biological machines.

This might be competitive cost wise.Soy is fine, but tempeh is just inedible. People do not need a lot of things to live, but what is wrong with eating insects?

I find it strange that you call tempeh (which is, by the way, made of soy) inedible, but you feel you could stomach insects.

Of course it's subjective, but I find tempeh pretty easy to enjoy, whereas I can can see how tofu is an acquired taste.

Whole insects - that turns my stomach. Something I know to be ground-up insects, also turns my stomach. I can handle small amounts of insect matter as an additive (e.g. cochineal) or a contaminant. Yeah, I'd give it a go - I've eaten all sorts of things to be macho -

Some of us like the idea of progress, you know. Holding up the 3rd world [Also, Dude, 3rd world is not the preferred nomenclature. Undeveloped world, please] as some shining example of where we should be heading doesn't appeal to many people in our society.

many people have lawns. Lawns are mowed to look nice. Nice looking lawns are not useful for food production. Kill the grass and plant the whole yard with food for your family, and then maybe they won't have to eat bugs.

also if you have a yard, you could parcel off a small bit of it for a chicken coop for not too much money and grow your own eggs / chickens

I think I'll probably try things like that before I raise insects for food.

Chickens are vile creatures. They shit everywhere and are in general pretty much horrible. I have seen them peck giant gaping wounds into each other. So not only are they terrible to non-chickens, they are equally bad to other chickens.There is no way grasshoppers are that filthy or evil.

Also many urban and suburban areas thankfully have zoning that does not allow the keeping of chickens. I would rather not be woken up at 4am because you don't want to go to the store to buy eggs.

The behavior you describe is abnormal. They are establishing dominance over each other - something that should have been sorted out quickly years ago. And healthy chickens certainly have no interest in eating feces.

But the three dozen eggs a week taste better, and no, I couldn't buy eggs that taste this good from any store. I can buy chicken from the store that tastes, well, like chicken, so I buy the chicken meat and grow the eggs.

Austin's ordinances allow for roosters under the caveat of the noise ordinance, which means that they are okay unless someone complains about the noise. Even in the center of town, we only have one neighbor, and they like our chickens, and we have a Serama rooster, who fully-sized is about nine inches tall, and who is quieter than the hens or the wild birds or the neighborhood dogs and cats.

many people have lawns. Lawns are mowed to look nice. Nice looking lawns are not useful for food production. Kill the grass and plant the whole yard with food for your family, and then maybe they won't have to eat bugs.

also if you have a yard, you could parcel off a small bit of it for a chicken coop for not too much money and grow your own eggs / chickens

In most municipalities, you can't really raise chickens. E.g where I live chickens cannot be kept within ~100 feet of a dwelling structure.

Gardening is usually doable though! Unless you are under a super obnoxious HOA, you can usually get away with a food-garden.

Here it's 50 feet from a dwelling on an adjacent property, but you can keep them near your own dwelling no problem. That's enough space for many houses, even in suburban areas - provided there's no HOA of course.

The whole reason people have lawns is to show off that they own land and that they're so rich they don't have to farm on it. Let me also remind you that this whole eating bugs idea is for poor countries that don't have enough food to go around, not us Americans. We have too much food.

Listen redneck, I raised them and it sucked. None of those are fun things, but I have done them all. There is nothing good about doing any of them either. Anyone who thinks there is, is simply falling to the noble savage BS.

Chickens don't have AM feeding requirements. And chicken manure is only a problem if you are keeping too many of them in cramped space with insufficient litter - probably because you're thinking about a farm with a coop big enough to work in, which is 0% like a backyard coop with deep litter for a half dozen chickens who can also roam the yard during the day.

Even a coop big enough to work in, and a flock of around 30 chickens isn't too bad. But they need to have enough space, or things DO get bet.

Actually, if you've got enough space, you almost don't need to care for them. Separate the losers of fights until they recover, a bit of food (though with enough space they'll mainly find their own. Still, you want them to accept you, and to lock them in the coop at night, so you don't lose a bunch to raccoons or skunks. And you need to have fresh water available.

You live next to a guy who decides to turn is backyard into a giant chicken coop and I'm sure you'd change your mind about that. Those zoning laws are about expectation for home buyers. It's one thing if you're rural, totally another if you go "hog wild" in your suburban back yard.

Its absurd, but hey so is the chicken nugget/finger/ring and its violent extrusion the KFC "double down."
Are we seriously so opposed to broccoli and other vegetables much loathed as children that we're going to eat bugs instead? we already have alternatives to meat that are cheaper, more nutritious, and widely available. The issue at hand is that we put meat in absolutely everything whether it needs it or not. Speaking for the midwest, even salads have cold-cuts liberally interspersed between the nutritionally devoid iceburg lettuce trucked in from new mexico and california. "lets eat bugs" is not a solution to the "meat is expensive" issue because it ignores the underlying problems of factory farming, monocultural foods, and a population of nutritionally ignorant and chronically obese adults and children. until we solve that shitstorm then no matter what we select as our meat methodone its just going to go down the same route.

It isn't that we are "designed" to eat meat but that we are adapted such that our bodies are capable of gaining nutrition from meat sources. Nature puts no labels or restrictions on what we should / shouldn't eat beyond what our bodies are capable of processing and what spectrum of nutrients our bodies require to operate. We are the ones making declarations of what we and others should and shouldn't be eating.

I don't think you have a clue how bugs will be consumed if/when they are. The won't be raised on small farms and sold/eaten whole. They'll be produced in huge industrial plants where the process can be mostly automated. They'll then be processed and ground up in to a paste and sold as a protein product to be made in to other food. Gross? Yeah, but that's pretty much how the meat packing industry works now anyway. Meat is often an industrial processed product, thus the "pink goo".

I thought the whole point of the bugs was a bit of protein and animal fat. isn't that the point of steak? just make it taste good and look like a burger. it's not like broccoli would fill that role ever... maybe if you genetically engineer the broccoli to consist of animal proteins and fat.

The OPPOSITE is true: Vegetarians have to look out to get all nutrients. (Disclaimer: I'm talking about real meat. I won't even touch the TOPIC of what's sold as "meat" in US supermarkets, even less that stuff itself)
Google "vitamins meat vs vegetables", don't take my word for it. Also, common sense.

Vegetarianism is not consistently correlated with a lower obesity level - high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, cane sugar, white flour, and agave nectar are vegan foods. Honey is a vegetarian food. French fries are vegetarian, and can be vegan depending upon what you use to fry them (most fast food restaurants mix some animal fat in their fryers). Cake is vegetarian. Donuts are vegetarian. Hash browns are vegetarian. Soda, apple juice, grapefruit juice, Budweiser, Miller Genuine Draft, Heineken, and

Interesting idea. How about using the bugs (properly prepared and ground) as an additive to ground animal meats?

The result would be a higher protein/lower fat meat that, with the animal meat would look and probably taste similar to pure animal meat.

I'd be fine with something like that (labelled accurately of course), but I've eaten grasshoppers in the past (combining them with animal meat would go a long way to making it a more pleasant experience, but that's just my cultural bias...).

The only people who are going to go out an eat a bug are the very daring Fear Factor types. Heck, I know rural kids who won't touch seafood because they never grew up w/ it and the smells/sights are off-putting. But, in a country were there's nothing close to a food shortage, good luck promoting a new, very small, very gross alternative!

When McBurgers are readily and cheaply available I doubt you'll see a huge increase in insects in our diet. The parts of the world where bugs are common in the diet are also places that can't afford to raise cattle and pigs etc. As contrary and diverse as our Western culture has become it might be possible to introduce this as a 'cool' alternative, at least in part. Personally I've eaten grasshopper and ants. Both were presented as delicacies, the ants as chocolates and I don't even recall how I ate the

perception and packaging. We aren't use to eating insects and as such we don't find it appetizing, even though in many parts of the world, they have found them to be delicacies. But, say for example someone makes a chocolate flavor protein shake where the protein comes from insects, that will be palatable. I would have a hard time trusting myself to eating insects, especially considering the amount of pesticides these creatures are subject too.

Sure it looks nice next to your kitchen aid blender right now, but these bugs will make it look like crap in a few days.

I spent a good many years of my life taking care of reptiles. Part of this involved growing all kinds of food items from fruit flies to cockroaches. Most of these things turn their housings into a shit encrusted shell relatively quickly. it's not the kind of thing you want in the kitchen. It also quickly turns into a ton of work. You'd have to be feeding your bugs every day, cleaning up

1) This is much too small to grow enough bugs to make anything but a light snack once every few weeks/months.2) Bugs stink. Any kind of bug- try raising them in any quantity and you'll quickly be turned off by the smell.

Why would you eat something as repulsive as insects when you can eat spirulina [wikipedia.org]? It's a perfect food. You could eat nothing but spirulina for the rest of your life and have all your nutritional needs satisfied. It's an easy additive to smoothies, puddings, soups, and anything else. It doesn't taste like much on its own, so it blends well with other ingredients. So it's a much lower bar than eating a worm, grasshopper, or any other insect.

A lot of people around the world enjoy eating snails (l'escargot). And, apparently they are quite easy to grow for yourself! Don't bother going to an expensive French restaurant and paying tens of dollars for six or twelve snails. Spend that cash on a terrarium, put some various stuff in it, put snails in, and feed them regularly on a diet of fresh greens. Soon they'll be big enough to chow down on.

Let's say I'm gungho for incorporating bugs into my diet. Seriously, let's just make this assumption to consider things a bit here. Next, let's assume I'm completely selfish and care not at all about "the environment". That is, let's just even the playing field and evaluate "bugs" just on the merits regarding two factors: nutritional benefit; cost (to me).

Now... why would I want to eat bugs again? For protein? Let's assume so. These days, it seems protein goes from about 4 cents a gram (dairy, etc.) u

First, you'll hear reports about people who can't bear to eat their precious grasshoppers, so they have been returning them to the wild.Then, you'll hear about the swarms of locusts devastating the countryside.

You probably already have bugs in your diet. Did you ever eat cherry yogurt? Check he ingredients. It probably lists carmine [wikipedia.org], which is made from beetles.

There are trace amounts of virtually anything in our food. By your own logic, UN should recommend developing nations to practice cannibalism because we engage in autocannibalism every day by means of digestion of flakes of epithelial cells separated from the inner lining of our mouths.

You didn't read his link, did you? The red coloring carmine, is ground up beetles.

This isn't casual ingestion of a few incidental particles, this is an actual, listed ingredient. As in they already are intentionally using insects.

This isn't trace amounts of stuff which you can't avoid. I suspect if most people knew that most foods which have been dyed red are that color due to the presence of insects, they'd be less enthusiastic.

You didn't read his link, did you? The red coloring carmine, is ground up beetles.

You didn't read his link, did you? The red coloring carmine is a single chemical compound that is derived from another compound extracted from the beetles by means of extensive purification. There are no "ground up beetles" in the food any more than there were "ground up pigs" in porcine insulin when that was used (and nowadays, there's no Escherichia coli in the synthesised insulin that diabetic patients get injected with).

The carminic acid used to produce the pigment can also be extracted from various microbes engineered for the purpose. Microbes are dissolved in a containment structure separate from their cultivation vats, and then allowed to settle out. The liquid and suspended carminic acid is then siphoned off, and metal salts are then added to give a lake pigment in a procedure that is mostly identical to the procedure for acid extracted from insects.

Also, the European Union bit:

As of January, 2012, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has changed the way they manufacture Carmine E120 for pharmaceutical products. The EFSA had raised concerns, over the increasing number of allergic reactions to Carmine derived from insects (E120.360), when used within the British pharmacopeia. Pharmaceutical products which had previously contained insect-derived carmine, have been replaced with a synthesised version of the food colorant.

The carminic acid used to produce the pigment can also be extracted from various microbes engineered for the purpose. Microbes are dissolved in a containment structure separate from their cultivation vats, and then allowed to settle out. The liquid and suspended carminic acid is then siphoned off, and metal salts are then added to give a lake pigment in a procedure that is mostly identical to the procedure for acid extracted from insects.

Since the '90s the US has eaten this synthetic & has also gained a massive obesity spike. Its synthetic nature benefits no one. We don't need fake color to confuse minds into thinking they're seeing fruit.

Sure, which fact bothers you:- More dies eaten per American after 1990 than before.- No claims of health benefits in dies- Dies are mostly used with artificial fruit flavor- Died candies, sodas, etc have more calories than fruit &/or water they're simulating, especially when considering the absorption effects of fruit fiber.- Weight gain (thus, obesity) is based on excessive caloric intake.

I have started to think about the "yuck" factor also in regard to all animals. When you look at how cows, pigs, chickens, etc. are raised, fed and "processed" by food factories... and look at the blood and gore and what goes into what you end up eating... it's pretty disgusting.I've mostly become a vegan (with some fish).Also, animal fat (even from organic, free range, etc. animals) is just really bad for you... heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, cancer, etc.

Wrong bucko! Wheat is the killer causing those diseases, that and the low fat diet that has plagued this country since the USDA started telling us how to eat (lot of whole grains). Grains are sugars, that's why kids like bread. That way of eating profits agro-chemical companies to the detriment of our health and that of the environment.

I was going to say [citation needed], but there are no end of sources making these and even wilder claims. I'll amend that to [citation from actual scientists needed], people have been eating wheat for over 10,000 years and grains in general for far longer. Many peoples throughout history have survived very well on low fat diets made up of mostly starches, such as potatoes, rice, manioc, yucca, yams, taro, etc. Our modern problem seems to be the QUANTITIES we ingest.

I'm prefacing this by saying my intent is not to insult and I can respect what you are saying and your reasoning.

I have been a hunter all of my life so part of the routine when I kill an animal is gutting and butchering it myself. For me and for anyone who works in an animal processing industry, the blood and gore associated with the meat is simply a step that has to be gone through in order to obtain the animal's meat for cooking and eating. Ultimately as slim has pointed out, this is a conditioned th

My "yuck" factor was raised not so much by the blood and gore of slaughter (which I realize is part of the process) but by the practices of factory farms which include inhumane overcrowding, diseased animals (and antibiotics to treat them), antibiotic resistant bacterial contamination, unsanitary processing, mixing meats from animals of dubious origin and health together (most hamburger is a melange of meat from different countries with little knowledge of its provenance) and long time storage and shipping.

I think the "yuck" factor comes mostly from insects being associated with rot, disease, and dead bodies. We don't have that sort of historical association with sea bugs as human sanitary threats, seen by a lot less people getting squicked out by those compared to land bugs.

I am something of a "character" I guess. I'll eat anything on the menu. During AIT we also ate insects. I mention that because I want to tell you that I have eaten insects and, frankly, they're not that good. The only "good" one I have found was the chocolate covered ant, because I couldn't taste the ant.

Well, fresh raw tiger swallowtail butterflies taste sort of like watermelon (take the legs and wings off first) and live wood grubs are slightly sweet and actually kind of delicious (ground grubs, though, are gritty and taste muddy) but ants taste of formic acid, and they latch on to your tongue-bumps with their mandibles if you eat them live, so you end up scraping ant-heads off your tongue with your teeth.

I have to disagree with you there; I can only recall eating two forms of prepared insects, but they have both been great. Roasted Peruvian jungle grubs were juicer than most meats I've tried and Australian Lemon Ants tasted like sweet lemons (I don't know the proper names of either of those). I also have a few friends who've been brave enough to eat various forms of fried or roasted insects and liked them. Raw animal meats are kinda weird, so I think it is only appropriate that I compare the prepared forms